Investigation of Anderson localization in disordered heterostructures irradiated by a Gaussian beam

The propagation of a Gaussian beam through a one-dimensional disordered media is studied. By employing the transfer matrix method, the localization length as a function of frequency is calculated for different values of transverse coordinate r. It is demonstrated that the localization length significantly depends on r in different frequency ranges. This result is in contrast to those reported for a plane wave incident on disordered structures in which the localization length is transversely constant. For some frequency regions, the peak of localization length is red-shifted and becomes smaller with increasing the transverse coordinate. At some frequencies, the system is in the localized state for particular values of r, while at other r values the system is in the extend regime at the same frequencies. It is observed that the quality of localization at each frequency depends on r. To quantify the localization behavior of the whole Gaussian beam, a modified localization length is defined in terms of the input and output powers of the Gaussian beam where the dependence of Anderson localization on the transverse coordinate is considered. It is suggested that this modified localization length is used in experiments performed for study of wave propagation in one-dimensional random media under illumination of laser beams.